40 Fun Facts About When My Name Was Keoko

Linda Sue Park borrowed the name Keoko from which relative, who was made to use it under Japanese rule?

Her mother was renamed Kyoko during the occupation; Park respelled it Keoko so that English-speaking children would pronounce it correctly.

Which tree, a national symbol of Korea, does Sun-hee's family pot and hide in a shed in When My Name Was Keoko?

Rose of Sharon trees are ordered dug up across Korea, so Omoni has one small tree potted and hidden; the children replant it by the front door once the war is over.

Believing Tae-yul dead, Omoni puts on mourning clothes of which color in When My Name Was Keoko?

White mourning clothes go on the day after a box arrives holding Tae-yul's last letter and a sword, yet he later walks back through the door alive.

Which Japanese first name does Tae-yul take when his family registers as Kaneyama in When My Name Was Keoko?

Nobuo is the name he must answer to at school, where lessons have turned into lectures and recitations designed to glorify Japan.

Which American treat from a ration box does Sun-hee's family taste for the first time in When My Name Was Keoko?

Chewing gum arrives after Japan's surrender in a ration box that also holds cigarettes, rice and crackers, and nobody in the house knows quite what to make of it.

With which drink does Tae-yul toast the Emperor's shrine before his kamikaze flight in When My Name Was Keoko?

Sake is raised to the Emperor's shrine before Flight Lieutenant Watanabe gives directions to the target and reads out a goodwill message from the Emperor.

Tae-yul learns that kamikaze, named for a typhoon that wrecked a Mongol fleet, means what in Japanese?

Divine wind is the meaning, and the suicide pilots so fascinate Tae-yul that he later volunteers for a secret mission that turns out to be theirs.

What do Japanese soldiers burn in the stove during a night raid on Sun-hee's home in When My Name Was Keoko?

Her diary goes into the fire, but Abuji tells her that only the paper has been destroyed, not her words, and the next day she begins a new one.

Which Japanese friend gives Sun-hee a veiled warning that sends Uncle into hiding in When My Name Was Keoko?

Tomo has hardly ever set foot in Japan, yet when the war ends his family is evacuated there, and Sun-hee goes to say goodbye.

Abuji chooses the Japanese surname Kaneyama in When My Name Was Keoko because it secretly means what?

Gold mountain lets Abuji obey the law while quietly honoring the family's Korean clan name, a choice Publishers Weekly said spoke volumes about his strength and intelligence.

What is Sun-hee and Tae-yul's real Korean family name, which the Japanese surname Kaneyama quietly honors?

Kim is the clan name, shared by Uncle, whose full name is Kim Young-chun, and Abuji reveres it as an old and noble clan.

What does Uncle secretly produce in When My Name Was Keoko to defy the occupation, while posing as pro-Japanese?

An underground newspaper is his real work, which is why his growing trade with Japanese customers alarms Abuji and leaves Tae-yul wondering if he is a collaborator.

In When My Name Was Keoko, Abuji holds which post at the local school, serving under a Japanese boss?

Vice-principal still means answering to a Japanese principal, and the job is borrowed from life: Park's own grandfather was vice-principal of a school.

The veiled warning Sun-hee receives in When My Name Was Keoko really concerned soldiers coming to seize what?

Metal objects were being collected for the military, so it was Uncle's machinery at risk rather than his life, and Sun-hee blames herself for his flight.

Which Japanese script does Sun-hee master in When My Name Was Keoko by giving each character a story?

Kanji comes easily to Sun-hee, the younger but stronger student, while a frustrated Tae-yul would rather be repairing motor scooters with Uncle.

Which prized possession, rebuilt from rusty parts, do soldiers confiscate from Tae-yul in When My Name Was Keoko?

His bicycle is taken one winter along with the family's blankets and jackets, and he shouts at Abuji for failing to save it.

Which tree are Koreans ordered to plant in place of their own national tree in When My Name Was Keoko?

Cherry shoots go in because the cherry is Japan's national tree, and soldiers later inspect the family's yard without spotting the tree Omoni has saved.

Which neighbor is beaten by a Japanese soldier for counting in Korean in When My Name Was Keoko?

Mrs. Ahn, who lives alone and speaks no Japanese, later lets Sun-hee teach her to count only as far as five, refusing to give the occupiers any more of her mind.

What does Uncle draw for Sun-hee and then throw into the fire in When My Name Was Keoko?

The Korean flag is illegal to display, so Sun-hee has never seen one before that morning; once the war is over she plans to sew her own.

Tae-yul's kamikaze flight in When My Name Was Keoko turns back to base because of what?

Cloudy weather wrecks the mission, which spares Tae-yul from carrying out his secret plan never to strike an American ship at all.

What happens to Tae-yul and his fellow pilots after their failed kamikaze flight in When My Name Was Keoko?

Thrown in jail for failing the mission, Tae-yul endures hunger and rats and cannot write home, so his family goes on believing he is dead.

How does Tae-yul, long believed dead, finally arrive at his family's door in When My Name Was Keoko?

In an American jeep, driven to the door a few days after a letter at last brings word of Uncle; the family then pampers the son they had mourned.

What does Sun-hee teach Tae-yul at the close of When My Name Was Keoko, once it is no longer forbidden?

The Korean alphabet was something Sun-hee herself could only learn from Abuji after liberation, having long worried that she could write her thoughts only in Japanese.

Rather than become a scholar like Abuji, what does Tae-yul decide to run at the end of When My Name Was Keoko?

Uncle's print shop will reopen as a tribute to both older men, since Tae-yul has just learned that quiet Abuji took risks of his own for Korea.

What secret about Abuji does Sun-hee reveal to Tae-yul near the end of When My Name Was Keoko?

He wrote for the resistance after Uncle vanished, criticizing Japanese education, so the soldiers who raided the house had been hunting for Abuji all along.

In When My Name Was Keoko, a postwar letter reveals Uncle was smuggled to which region, where Communists halted travel?

Manchuria is where he was taken after hiding in a neighbor's cellar, and with travel halted he is still unable to come home when the book ends.

In When My Name Was Keoko, Koreans who side with the occupiers are branded chin-il-pa, which means what?

Lover of Japan is the insult, and Sun-hee realizes it fits her friend Jung-shin's family when the girl's older sister is spared from being sent to work in Japan.

Which game does Sun-hee use to mend her friendship with Jung-shin in When My Name Was Keoko?

Cat's cradle, shared along with a treat of popcorn, wins Jung-shin back after she has avoided Sun-hee out of shame at her father's collaboration.

Uncle is beaten in When My Name Was Keoko for altering news of which Korean Olympic marathon champion of 1936?

Sohn Kee-chung won in Berlin but was entered under the Japanese name Kitei Son because Korea was occupied, a slight Uncle tries to correct at the cost of a beating.

With Abuji's consent, Tae-yul leaves school in When My Name Was Keoko to help Japanese soldiers build what?

An airstrip gives the plane-mad Tae-yul his first work near aircraft, and two months later he joins the Japanese Youth Air Corps.

In When My Name Was Keoko, who summons neighbors into the street for accountings and announces war news?

The block leader is the voice of the occupation on Sun-hee's street, claiming Japanese victories at sea and one night declaring Uncle a traitor.

What gift from the Japanese emperor does every student receive in When My Name Was Keoko, along with a day off classes?

A rubber ball, made with rubber from plantations in Burma, Malaya and Singapore, is handed to each child, and the day is spent playing with it instead of studying.

Which American general's leaflets, dropped by plane in When My Name Was Keoko, promise that Koreans will not be bombed?

Douglas MacArthur's leaflets are seized by street guards, but Sun-hee and Tae-yul smuggle copies home for Abuji to translate.

What do girls at Sun-hee's school use for bayonet practice in When My Name Was Keoko, ahead of a feared invasion?

Sharpened bamboo is all the girls are given, and Sun-hee's real fear is that American soldiers will not be able to tell Koreans from Japanese.

Which Japanese attack do boys act out in When My Name Was Keoko, pretending to fly planes and kill Americans?

Pearl Harbor is the boys' game, and on the morning of the real attack Uncle needs Tae-yul's help running off flyers for the government.

Which Linda Sue Park novel, set in medieval Korea, won the Newbery Medal the year When My Name Was Keoko appeared?

A Single Shard, about celadon pottery, took the medal, and Park handed it to her father at the ceremony for filling her childhood with books and stories of Korea.

What are schoolchildren sent to dig up for the Japanese military in When My Name Was Keoko, months after Uncle flees?

Pine roots yield resin the military wants, a sign of shortages so severe that families are soon felling hillside trees for fuel.

Before his kamikaze flight in When My Name Was Keoko, what does Tae-yul leave in an envelope for his parents?

Hair and nail clippings go into the envelope once his mission is set, and on the last morning he dresses in a jumpsuit and ceremonial sword.

Which emperor of Japan, whose speeches Tae-yul must memorize in When My Name Was Keoko, reigned throughout the war?

Hirohito had reigned since 1926, and his surrender in August 1945 ended 35 years of Japanese rule in Korea.

When rice runs short in When My Name Was Keoko, Sun-hee's family eats barley or which grain used as chicken feed?

Millet reaches the table because the rice is needed for Japan's war, and Uncle urges everyone to eat whatever Omoni cooks.